Chapter

01
I spent the day chasing the Angel of Death.
Being a paramedic can be a hard life, living in an ambulance
for twelve hours a day, parked on street corners, inhaling reheated
7-Eleven burritos and Red Bull. There are shifts that wear on you,
when no matter what you do, even if you run calls as smoothly as
possible and do everything just right, that despite all the king’ s
horses and all the king’ s men . . .
Death walks in without remorse.
I’ve seen people’ s spirits leave them before my eyes. And there
is always something different in the room right then, something
transcendental, as if unseen ushers are escorting a soul from this
world. The entire week had been like that for my partner and me—
always one step behind the Reaper.
So you can imagine my surprise when we actually caught him.

The harder my partner pushed on the gas pedal, the longer

395 northbound grew.
I pounded on the dashboard.  “Come on, you pig.”
“That’ s all she’ s got. Governor’ s kicked in.” Bones hunched over
the steering wheel, bouncing his head to an inaudible rhythm.
I felt our momentum level out at seventy-five miles per hour.
The management made sure to keep our speed under control,
among other things.

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I sat back in my seat, placing my right foot up against the dash

and the door.  “ Is this our third cardiac arrest?”
He nodded.  “ Just sifting with his scythe. Folks better break off
a hyssop branch, if you know what I’m saying.”
I had no idea what he was saying.
But that wasn’t unusual.
My partner, Thaddeus McCoy, had been called Bones for as
long as I’ d known him. The nickname seemed especially fitting,
even beyond his surname, given that he wore black medic pants—
not the dark navy blue like everyone else—and a black leather belt
that wrapped around his front with no visible buckle on it. His
pants tapered down near the top of his boots, giving his uniform
a 1960s Star Trek appearance. He sported a wiry body frame with
pale Germanic skin, closely cropped straw-colored hair, and a well-
groomed moustache that, were it shaved any smaller above his lip,
would bestow upon him a Charlie Chaplin–like countenance.
Our call had come in as an “unknown man down on the sidewalk
at First and West, in front of the church—unknown if conscious
or breathing.” Which, at the risk of sounding jaded, was generally
code for “drunk guy on the street corner.” But one thing I’ d learned
as a medic was to never judge too early. And based on the updated
report we’ d received from dispatch, this sounded like the real thing.
A couple minutes into our response the dispatcher advised us that
per an off-duty park ranger on scene, our patient was pulseless and
apneic, and bystander CPR had been initiated. She also mentioned
that the Reno Fire Department had a working structure fire just
north of downtown and their next-in unit would likely arrive several
minutes after us. If this guy had a chance, we were it.
“Look, Jonathan,” Bones squealed in a high Mr. Bill voice, hold-

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 Tomorrow we die

ing the radio microphone up by his side window, light posts and
cars whizzing past, “I’m the fastest mic in the world.”
I refused to respond to his impromptu puppet, knowing that
if I so much as acknowledged it, I would find myself talking to a
derisive plastic microphone for the rest of the shift. I turned my
focus to the map book in my lap.  “So you want to take Mill down-
town and then jog over to First and West.”
This time Bones spoke in the guttural voice he uses for
our ambulance, Medic Two, which through the outpouring of
his hyperactive imagination has also grown a sentient, albeit
­simpleton, ­personality.  “ Yes, Jonathan. That sounds good. . . .
And I love you.”
“ That’ s great.” I cringed with the realization that I’ d just
validated his anthropomorphic creation.
“Jonathan,” in Medic Two’ s deep, gravelly voice he continued,
“I love you.”
I patted the vinyl on the dashboard as if it were a horse’ s
neck.  “ Thanks, Medic Two.”
“Jonathan?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me too?”
There was no escaping this now.
“Yes, yes I do, Medic Two.”
“More than Medic Seven?”
“Yes, more than Medic Seven.”
“Good. I love you too. . . . Jonathan?”
I looked up at the ceiling of the cab.  “ Yes?”
“I’m not a pig. I’m really fast.”
“You’re right, Medic Two. My bad.”

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 Shawn Grady

Bones greeted other vehicles in Medic Two’ s voice as we wailed

passed them on the freeway.  “ Hello. Hi. I love you.”
At the Mill Street exit, we hit heavy traffic. Most cars pulled to
the right, but one older model GMC pickup skidded to a stop in
front of us. Bones locked up our brakes and laid on the air horn. I
lurched forward in my seat, held tight by the shoulder belt.
“Pull to the right!” Bones motioned with his hands, mouthing
his words with exaggeration.  “ Pull. To. The. Right.”
Getting impatient, I picked up the PA mic.  “ Pull to the right.
Yes, you. Pull to the right.”
The driver turned his wheel and rolled right, giving us just
enough room to squeeze by on the shoulder to the left. Bones shot
a friendly glance his direction as we passed. Already five minutes
into our response, the chances of our patient surviving decreased
exponentially with every second lost. With permanent brain death
occurring after six minutes in cardiac arrest, time was running
out.
We shot past County Hospital and screamed west into the
heart of downtown Reno. We wove between and around taxicabs
and shuttle busses and passed weekly motels. The snow-covered
Sierras disappeared behind the towering casinos. We swung over
to First Street, and Bones killed the siren save for a couple whoop-
whoops as he brought the box to a stop in front of the church.
There on the sidewalk, in the shadow of a hundred-year-old vine-
covered Methodist sanctuary, knelt a balding park ranger doing
chest ­compressions on a pale man in a long black overcoat.
“Medic Two’ s on scene—no fire department,” I reported to
dispatch and opened the door. The spring air felt brisk. I grabbed
the defibrillator off the gurney in back and brought it to the

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 Tomorrow we die

patient’ s side, kneeling by the park ranger.  “Go ahead and stop
compressions.”
The patient looked to be in his sixties, sporting a scraggly gray
beard and wispy hair. Yellowish vomit oozed down the side of his
face. His eyes were in a fixed and dilated stare. Bones cut off his
shirt. I placed the defibrillator patches on his chest and looked at
the monitor to examine his heart rhythm.
“Coarse V-fib, Bones. Charging to one-twenty. I’m clear—
everyone clear.” The park ranger held his hands up and glanced at
his knees.
I delivered the first biphasic electrical shock and watched the
man’ s body arch in tension and then relax again flat upon the
concrete.
“Still fib. Charging to one-fifty. Everyone clear.”
I delivered a second shock. No change.
“Charging to two hundred. Clear.”
The Shock button glowed a fiery red, the air taut with the
high-pitched whining of potential energy.
God, just let me have this one back.
My finger met the button. The man’ s body surged upward.
What followed was silence—and the long flat line of asystole.
I exhaled and nodded to the park ranger.  “All right. Let’ s resume
compressions. Bones, you want me to bag him while you set up
to intubate?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
I inserted a curved piece of plastic to hold back the man’ s tongue
from his throat. And after placing a mask over his mouth and nose,
I squeezed the purple bag attached to it to inflate his lungs and
breathe for him.  “As soon as we get that tube, let’ s drop some epi
down—”

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 Shawn Grady

The monitor beeped.

I waved off the park ranger.  “ Hold up.”
The angled complexes of an organized heart rhythm graced
the screen’ s black background—like a repetitive drawing of a small
foothill leading to a mountain peak that dropped into a valley on
the opposite side. Slow at first, then more rapid.
“Sinus tach. We got pulses with that?”
Bones reached for a carotid pulse at the neck.  “ I got one
here.”
I felt the patient’ s wrist.  “ Yeah, me too. I’ve got radials.”
We’ d gotten him back. Hope sprang forth in me. Only time
would tell if we’ d saved his heart but not his brain.
He was still unconscious, so Bones zipped open the intuba-
tion kit and prepared to place a breathing tube down the patient’ s
throat.
I wrapped a tourniquet tight around his arm. The only vein I
could feel popped up in the crook of his elbow. I swabbed it with
alcohol and inserted the needle. A burgundy flash of blood filled
the needle hub. I advanced it just a tad more before threading the
plastic catheter into the vein.
“Sharp out.” I placed the bare needle flat on the sidewalk and
hooked up IV tubing connected to a bag of saline.
Blanket protocol for a patient on the streets like this involved
a medication called Narcan to reverse the effects of possible heroin
overdose. I administered the standard dose and squeezed the IV
bag to flush it into his bloodstream.
Bones clicked into place a curved steel blade on a cylindrical
handle. He twirled the sickle-shaped laryngoscope in his left hand
and pulled out the short piece of plastic that held back the patient’ s
tongue. He positioned the head and shined the light from the end

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 Tomorrow we die

of the laryngoscope blade down the man’ s throat. With his opposite
hand, he angled an endotracheal tube in toward the vocal cords.
The park ranger stood wide-eyed, staring at the twisted pro-
gression of it all.
I picked up the needle from the pavement and plunged a drop
of blood onto a glucometer to check our patient’ s blood-sugar level.
The display flashed a normal reading.
Bones withdrew the laryngoscope blade and picked up the bag
mask. He seated it over the man’ s mouth and squeezed.  “ I’m having
a hard time seeing down there. I’ ll give it another go.”
He set the bag mask down and positioned himself for a second
attempt. He squinted down the man’ s gullet, his fist straining to
keep the handle in position.
Our patient bolted upright.
Bones flipped on his back, the laryngoscope skidding away like
a hockey stick on ice.
The man flashed wild eyes, found me, and grabbed my shirt
collar. He labored to breathe, staring with constricted pupils and
sweat beading on his brow. His mouth trembled, trying to form
a sentence.
He found words with a winded, raspy voice.  “Arepo . . . Arepo
the Sower.”
“Hey, it’ s okay. We’re the paramedics. Here, let’ s lay you—”
“Listen.” He grabbed the back of my neck, struggling to keep
himself upright. His hands felt dirty and rough.  “Arepo the Sower . . .
holds the wheels at work.”
I shook my head and lifted his arm away.  “ He’ s delirious. Here,
you need oxygen.”
He slipped back toward the concrete.
“Here, yeah, lie back. Bones, let’ s throw him on some O’s.”

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 Shawn Grady

Bones reached for an oxygen mask. The man tensed and winced,
his heart rhythm oscillating on the heart monitor.
Bones shifted the screen to see it.  “ He’ s throwing runs of
V-tach.”
The man reached inside his coat and, with a trembling hand,
produced a folded piece of notebook paper. He grasped my forearm
and forced it into my palm.
“Martin.” His eyes locked with mine.  “Give this to Martin.”

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 Chapter
02
The defib alarmed.
Color drained from his face.
I squeezed his shoulders.  “ Wait. What? Who’ s Martin?”
Bones picked up the laryngoscope.  “ He’ s bradying down.”
The man slumped to the sidewalk. On instinct I rolled him
away from me. It wasn’t five seconds later that he spewed yellow
chunks all over the park ranger’ s shoes.
Bones cleared the man’ s mouth with the portable suction
catheter.
A vigorous sternal rub didn’t wake him.
Bones reset his intubation equipment and talked to him-
self.  “GCS less than eight. Intubate.”
A fire engine siren blared a couple blocks out.
Things moved too fast to process.
Slow down . . . stick with ABCs.
Airway.
His respirations were shallow and slow. His skin felt cool and
sweaty. I held his wrist but couldn’t find a radial pulse anymore,
only a thready carotid on the neck at thirty beats per minute. Bones
placed his stethoscope in his ears one-handed, the other hand hold-
ing an inserted tube at the man’ s lips. He listened to lung sounds
to make sure his tube was good.
Airway secured. Progress. The rumble of a fire engine exhaust

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 Shawn Grady

brake sounded behind me, followed by the squeak and hiss of an

air brake.
We needed to get our patient’ s heart rate up before it stopped
beating again.  “ Bones, I’m gonna try to pace him.”
I set the defib to deliver sequential minishocks of electricity
to our patient’ s heart. The pectoral muscles in his chest twitched.
Heartbeats flicked faster on the display.  “Okay, we’ve got electrical
capture.”
Bones nodded.  “And I’ve got radials with that.”
A firefighter walked up.  “ Where you guys at?”
“Let’ s grab a quick blood pressure and then load and go.”
The fire captain clipped a radio mic to his shirt.  “Saint Mary’s?”
“Yeah, that’ ll be closest. Mind if we take two of your guys?”
“Not at all.”
One firefighter moved to the man’ s head to squeeze the bag
now attached to the breathing tube. The other pumped the handle
of a blood-pressure cuff with a stethoscope in his ears.
He bled off the air.  “ Eighty-two over fifty.”
“Okay.” I blew out a quick breath.  “ Let’ s roll him on the flat
and get him loaded onto the gurney.”
We buckled the patient on the bed. My eyes met the park
ranger’s.  “ Thank you.”
He gave a nod.
I climbed into the back of the ambulance.
Bones looked back through the doghouse, the small opening
between the cab and the patient area.  “All set?”
“Let’ s roll.”
He flicked on the siren and set off for the ER. I found myself
wishing I had gathered more history on scene. Had our patient been

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 Tomorrow we die

complaining of anything before he passed out? Did he simply go

into spontaneous cardiac arrest? Had the Narcan helped at all?
I turned my focus to a vial of amiodarone and inserted a needled
syringe to draw it up. The medication would deter his heart from
going back into a lethal rhythm. I flicked the bubbles to the top
of the syringe and injected the contents into a second IV bag I’ d
hung from the gurney pole.
The siren shut off and the ambulance jostled into the parking
lot. It turned, the back-up alarm sounded, and through the back
windows the emergency room doors drew closer. The firefighter
across from me reported another blood pressure similar to the
first.
Questions about the patient abounded in my mind.
What happened to you?
What were you trying to tell me?
I took a last listen to lung sounds to ensure the breathing tube
was still in place, then stood up and organized the myriad wires
and IV tubing aboard the gurney.
“All right. Monitor, O2 bottle, tube’ s secure, IV bags and tub-
ing . . . we’re all set.”
The ambulance shut off. Bones came around back and swung
open the doors. He raised his arms, grinning with televangelist
grandeur.  “ Thou, unknown man down. Come forth.”

We got off work an hour late after cleaning and restocking the
ambulance and finishing paperwork. The Sierras stood dark and
majestic, silhouetted by the day’ s crimson farewell. What was it
they said in the navy? Red at night, sailors delight. Red in the morn’,
sailors mourn.
Norah Jones escorted me home, her sultry, smoky voice enticing

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 Shawn Grady

“Come Away With Me” through the car speakers. The black leather
of my VW Passat presented a comfortable contrast to the gritty
chaos of the workday. I longed to shed my uniform, to be free of
the sublime stench of the ambulance.
A paper crinkled in the side pocket of my pants. And I heard
my patient’ s raspy voice. . . .  “Arepo the Sower holds the wheels at
work.”
I pulled out the note and unfolded it atop the steering wheel.
A series of markings littered both sides of the sheet—straight and
curved lines, dashes and slashes.
Chicken scratches.
I tossed it onto the passenger-side floor.
Streetlights glowed along the sidewalks. The lengthening
day disappeared in the west. Blue and red lights illumined my
dash.
That look in his eyes . . .
“Give this to Martin.”
I shrugged it off, watching the road zip beneath me. Norah
finished. The Byrds came on.  “To everything . . . turn, turn, turn.”
I laughed and shook my head. The man had been obviously low
on oxygen and perhaps delusional. A paper full of scribbles meant
nothing. I was going home. I was going to relax and get away from
work and have my own life for at least the next ten hours.
The notepaper sat on the floor.
I couldn’t see throwing it away in good conscience. That left
me one option . . .
I hit the blinker at the next intersection. I’ d turn around, take
a half hour to go back to Saint Mary’s, and give the piece of paper
to the man—or at least to his nurse—and be done with it. The

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 Tomorrow we die

sooner I found him, the sooner I could drop it off and be home in
a hot shower.

Night had fallen by the time I pulled into the hospital parking
lot. The fatigue in my muscles made it feel later than it was. The
evening air bit sharp with the reminder that winter had yet to fully
loosen its grip.
At the ER doors I punched in the key code to enter. By now
they probably would have moved our patient to the cardiac intensive
care unit, but I decided to stop and ask to be sure. A multitasking
middle-aged nurse with long, frizzy brown hair gave me three sec-
onds, time enough for her to say, “CIC, ’bout an hour ago,” before
trading the clipboard chart she was holding with a new one from
a shelf. I don’t think she even heard me thank her as she set off for
the next patient room.
I made my way down the long corridor that led to the eleva-
tors. The entire hospital buzzed in a constant state of movement,
someone always going somewhere and doing something. The extent
of my interaction was limited to a polite smile as I shifted with the
sea of changing faces.
In the elevator I ran my fingers over the folds on the paper.
I placed it in my jacket pocket, and at the fifth floor exited and
walked toward a tall reception counter in the cardiac intensive care
unit. Behind it sat a young nurse with straight black hair just long
enough to be pulled into a ponytail. She reclined in a cheap office
chair, staring blank-faced at the surrounding rows of flat-panel
monitors coursing with electrical heart rhythms. I recognized her
from the ER.
She grinned with straight white teeth. “Uh-oh. Here comes
trouble.”

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I smiled and scoured the back of my mind for her name.

Sherri . . . Brandi . . . no, something more androgynous . . .
“Bobbi,” I said in stride.  “ Hey.”
“How have you been, Jonathan?” She almost succeeded in con-
cealing a glance at the name sewn on my work jacket.
“I’m all right. Tired. It’ s been a busy week. We ran three cardiac
arrests in a row today.”
“So you’re the one who’ s been sending us so much business.”
“I wish I could say that. Only one made it to the hospital.”
“Oh yeah? What’ s the name?” She leaned forward and pulled
a scrunchy out of her hair.
“I actually don’t know it. We found him on the street, and he
didn’t have any ID.”
“Hmm.” She sifted through a stack of charts on the desk.  “ We
did get a John Doe from the ER about an hour ago. This says he
was a field save, came in intubated. Male, in his sixties.”
“That sounds like him.”
“Wow.” She stared at the chart.  “ You’re not going to believe
this.”
“What?” I leaned forward on the counter.
“According to this he just AMA’ d outta here.”
Against Medical Advice.  “ He just up and walked out?”
Bobbi twirled her scrunchy and looked aside.  “So that’ s what
all the commotion was about . . .”
“What commotion?”
“You know, being stuck out here I am so out of the loop. I swear,
I feel like all I do is stare at ectopy and hit Silence buttons.”
“Bobbi, what commotion?”
“What? Oh. Well, a tall, disheveled-looking man stormed past

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 Tomorrow we die

the front here. And I thought I heard a couple of the other nurses
saying that he was lucky he didn’t yank his vocal cords out.”
“He pulled his tube.”
“Yeah.” She glanced at the chart.  “And his IVs too.”
“That must’ve been him.” I nodded at a small brass key with a
plastic ring tag clipped to the top of the chart.  “ What’ s that?”
She picked it up off of the clipboard and read a small sticky
note beneath it.  “ ‘Patient belonging left behind.’ ” She twirled the
key between her fingers and thumb.
“What does it say on the tag there?”
She held it close to her nose.  “ River Crown Motel.” Then flipped
it over.
I huffed.  “ The River Crown. No doubt.”
“You know it?”
“Too well. East Fourth Street.” I scratched the back of my
neck.  “ I just can’t believe that he left already.”
“Maybe you should check on him.”
“This day is never going to end.”
“What’ s that?”
I’ve come this far. . . .  “ You know, you’re probably right. He could
be really sick somewhere.”
“Yeah.” She made a face of joking concern.  “Or at the very
least locked out.” Bobbi looked around and then took my hand in
both of hers on the countertop. A cool metal shape dropped in my
palm.  “ You really are so sweet to go the extra mile. Poor guy, he
might not even be able to get into his room.” She ran her fingers
along my knuckles.
Were I less tired and less consumed by the growing cloud of
mystery surrounding this patient and his absurd statements and
the ridiculous piece of paper that I couldn’t seem to throw away, I

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may have capitalized on that moment and scored a date with a hot
young nurse. But instead, half considering myself a fool, I simply
patted her hand and smiled.  “ Thanks, Bobbi.” I turned and made
my way to the elevators.
“Don’t be a stranger, Jonathan.”
Back in my car, I hunched over the wheel and exhaled. The
steam from my breath climbed over the windshield and retreated.
I held up the key in the fluorescent parking lot light.
All right, Jonathan, let’ s get this done.

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